I can tell you right now that the next two entries will be especially long...If that means much to any of you.
This year, as I remember it, was the year that my life kinda started to change for the better. It started to head in the right direction...
I started off with a new roommate. My first one wasn't bad or anything, but I felt that I would be more comfortable with my new one. He is from my home church, and I had known him a while, so I was sure that we would get along well, and we did.
This next part of the story would change the course of my life forever. My roommate got this religious preference card from the university (which I never filled out...). He filled it out and turned it back in. So later on he gets this email from some random person about a call-out meeting for Chi Alpha. We had only heard of this because his dad was a part of it when he was in college. So we both attended the meeting. I of course was freaking out because there was a lot of new people, and I wasn't doing so well with new people yet. I had a good time because I absolutely love bowling. There was also an opportunity to sign up to show interest in a bible study and a morning prayer meeting. And being raised in a Christian home, these introductory activities were non-threatening to me so I showed some interest by signing up.
By this time, I had made a few more friends on our floor. I had probably doubled my friend output from my freshman within the first month. There were some people on my floor that were very friendly to me. Being a bunch of guys, we of course had Halo to draw us together and build community. I guess all you need to make friends is some common courtesy and some common interest...
While I was making some kind of progress in the friends department, the academic department was suffering a major depression. I was doing worse and worse in my CS classes. The general disappointment in my poor performance lowered my self-esteem because I placed great value in how I did in school, and not much else really. I felt like a failure every time something didn't go right for me. I was way too hard on my self and it took a toll on me. I tried to get some help with my school work, but the professors I saw didn't seem to want to help me. Or maybe they just couldn't? I don't know. The combination of loneliness and depression from lack of self-esteem and self-worth is a dangerous one. While I never came close to attempting to take my own life, I definitely thought about it. I used to always wonder if anyone would notice if I was gone for good. The truth is, someone would have noticed. Someone would have cared. God cares...
So I was having all of these problems. This made me a desperate person. With God, wonderful things tend to happen when desperation is introduced. I attended all the bible studies and prayers I could go to with the Chi Alpha group, mostly out of wanting new friends. While I was there I decided I would take advantage of the situation and cry out to God in prayer. I don't know if I would call it prayer necessarily, more like I was begging God for some kind of answer for how to fix my life which at any moment could have slipped down hill for the worst.
Fast forward to around Valentines day in 2007. We had a huge snow storm that week that yielded over 10 inches of snow and got classes cancelled for two days for the first time in 20 years. This was a rare occurrence indeed. I don't think I left Earhart for two straight days. There was no reason to since there was food right inside of my building...
This snowstorm was also significant for another reason. A reason that would impact my life immensely and a reason that continues to impact my life today...
I forget when exactly I found this out, but some new Chi Alpha missionaries were coming to visit us. They happened to be visiting the day of the snow storm. I am glad they didn't let a few inches of snow get in their way...
Their visit, and announcement of their pending arrival in the fall was such an answer to prayer. All through out the times of prayer and bible study, I really felt like we had something good, and that if we just had some permanent full-time staff that things would really take off. This wasn't really a vision in the classical sense, but a visionary mindset... I could just feel it...
They had a gift for me, since they are generous people. A book entitled Secrets of the Secret Place by Bob Sorge. They didn't know it at the time, but I was not much of a reader at the time. I am only today reading that book, and am about half way through. And I of course recommend it to anyone looking to transform their own personal time with God.
Back to my troubles in school. My solution to the problem, and after much consideration, was to change my major to Medical Technology. I did this realizing that it would require me to be in school for an extra year, but I figured and extra year here would be better than being unhappy and probably failing out of school...
As you can tell, this was the year that started things in the right direction for me. However, the ball really got rolling in my junior year of college...
No comments:
Post a Comment